Surfacing (Spark Saga) Read online

  Surfacing

  By

  Melissa Dereberry

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of characters to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. The author holds exclusive rights to this work. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited.

  © Copyright 2014 by Melissa Green Dereberry

  Cover art by Blue Bomb (bluebombdesign.com)

  For Joseph and Abby

  Zach

  Once in a great while, life throws a major kink in your slinky. I mean, you’re just sitting there enjoying a beautiful moment—the glimmering flow, the amazement—and all of a sudden, something goes wonky for no apparent reason, and the whole thing is just a big scrambled mess. This happens, for example, when you realize what you thought to be true was a gross miscalculation. This happens, for me, I hear a man’s voice say, “I’m here, Tess.”

  Nothing registers, at first, until I see Tess’s dad scrambling to his feet. The reality of what has just occurred is like an icy jab, in the center of my chest. I had just heard the most beautiful, compelling sound of my entire life—Tess’s voice, slicing through a quiet as cold as death, saying, “Zach, are you here?” This was the sound I’d waited for—gone through time for—and yet, misperception had slithered around the room like a fog. She actually hadn’t said that at all. In reality, Tess had sheepishly asked, “Dad, are you here?” Crisp, sharp words. Knives. Words that echo again and again in my mind, like coins dropped in a machine that will never give me what I want. Forever, sold out. Tess—the love of my life, the girl, the One—hadn’t called out for me after all.

  My mind clamors for sense. She didn’t call out my name. Ok. Of course, she called out for her dad first. Why wouldn’t she? And, given the fact that she’s been asleep for several days, well, who knows what’s going through her mind? She is undoubtedly confused, not in her right mind for the moment. Give her time. She will realize. She will call for me.

  As expected, Tess’s dad is leaned over her bed, embracing her, whispering something inaudible, in between audible cries. I think I hear Tess reply, but I can’t be sure. Only sounds. It occurs to me that I have yet to see her face. I picture it in my mind, the way she looked on the first day of orientation. Though it was only months ago, it seems like it happened in another time and place. She was sitting in the back, her head down, staring at her computer monitor, her dark hair draped over one shoulder. She was twirling a piece of it in her hand. She looked slightly frustrated. She was biting her bottom lip. She had lip gloss on…a perfect shade of peach. When she looked up at me, she smiled shyly and quickly looked down again. I didn’t know it then, of course, but she was mine already.

  Time travel is a curious and mind boggling phenomenon. An outside observer, for example, hearing my story for the first time might be thinking, at this point, now where exactly are we in this story? Of course Tess and I met, fell in love, and I taught her what I knew about time travel. My father left me a time travel chip with specific instructions. I figured out that she was about to go back in time and erase everything that had happened to her—erase the memories on her chip. So I inserted a copy of her chip into my own body, and it was as if we had been in love the whole time. Her experiences became my experiences. I knew and felt everything.

  I remember when she went back to Fuller Park, how I raced to find her after discovering what she was about to do. When I saw her running into that storm, my heart was beating so fast I could hear it in my ears—louder than thunder. If she succeeded in diverting the storm, saving herself from harm, she could erase everything on her chip. For her, time travel would no longer have been a possibility…which would have meant she and I would not be connected, through all time. I hoped beyond all hope that I wasn’t too late, that she wouldn’t succeed. Watching her escape into that storm, I felt another reality hit me: As much as I selfishly hoped she would still be mine, she could die, right here in front of me—and it would be all my lousy fault.

  In the end, she did succeed in saving Dani, as was always the plan. But she suffered injury to herself in the process. That’s why she has been here, in the hospital, for going on a week. Now I’m stuck here wondering if she did, in fact, succeed. Did she manage to erase her memories of me? Has she awakened without the memories that matter most—at least to me? Has she failed to wake up as Zach Webb’s soul mate? Will I be, to her, simply a kid she used to know, a dork on the school bus?

  Dani comes up beside me and touches my arm. Beautiful, sweet Dani. I fight back tears because I don’t want to be forced to explain my emotions to her. Tears, in such situations are to be expected, but mine would reveal too much. I would never be able to hide the joy that has gripped my soul, nor the disappointment that would fight it to the death. I will be strong—for Tess, and me.

  “Is she gonna be ok?” Dani whispers, still touching my arm, her fingers squeezing it slightly.

  I can’t answer her question, of course, though I would be more than thrilled to answer, in full confidence, that yes, she will be just fine. In the absence of that confidence, I can only nod—more to convince myself than Dani—saying the words silently, in my head, “She is going to be just fine.” If I say it enough times, it will come true. I don’t want to think about what might happen next, but, like a cold that won’t go away, it pervades my brain. What if she has no idea who I am and I can’t put my arms around her? What if I can’t brush my hand down her long, gorgeous hair and whisper in her ear…don’t ever leave me again. Reality—a slap in the face—tells me these things may never happen. And yet, I can’t contain my joy that she is awake. I may live the rest of my life without her, but she will be alive, and if that’s the best I can hope for, then I will be happy.

  I wonder, vaguely, if all of this ever entered my dad’s mind as he was researching and perfecting the art of time travel. It crosses my mind, given the fact that he mentioned seeing something between Tess and me in his letter, that he might have been operating from experience. Had my dad experienced time travel himself? Had he known or speculated what might happen? I had read all his journals and the one letter he had left for me, and there seemed to be no indication that he’d been through something similar. Still, I had to wonder. I make a mental note to read everything again with a sharper analytical eye. Perhaps there are hidden clues.

  Suddenly Tess sits up, and incredibly, she is looking right at me. Her face is paler than usual, her hair tousled. But somehow she looks refreshed, as if waking from a brief nap instead of several days of a coma. Beautiful beyond measure. I stare at her pinkish lips, hoping that she will say my name. My hope is so intense; it is physically painful. She looks at me with a flash of recognition across her eyes for a split second, like a shooting star. The flash becomes obvious endearment, and my heart jumps… and then deflates when Tess opens her mouth to say, “Dani?” Dani—of course—she’s standing right next to me.

  I feel unsteady on my feet. Dani dashes up to Tess’s bedside. I have no concept of what is happening. Everything goes fuzzy around me, and I think I am going to faint. I realize when I reach up to rub my eyes that it’s because my eyes are clouded with tears. I turn to go, not wanting anyone to see them. Just as I turn, one spills onto my cheek, slides hopelessly down. I know I will not be able to stop them now. As doctors begin to gather in the room, a commotion begins and everyone is talking at once. I decide that now is as good a time as any to simply bow out.

  All the way to my car, half of my heart is glad. The one I love is alive. No more darkness. No longer alone. The other half of my heart wants to die. Because the reality of it is poison, coursing through: She woke up as Tess Turner, a girl who has been through a terrible, life-changing experience, a girl who just wants her parents and her best fr
iend by her side. I am next to no one to her.

  Tess

  In my dad’s favorite movie, It’s a Wonderful Life, some guy gets blamed for a bunch of money that gets lost from his bank and decides to end it all by jumping off a bridge. Only, when he gets there, some angel swoops in to save him and they end up drinking coffee together. It’s pretty boring at first, but then they start talking about life, and it gets sort of interesting. Anyway, so this guy is complaining to the angel—George, that was the guy’s name—saying his life sucks and all, how he wishes he’d never been born. So the angel gets annoyed—or, at least, I would. I mean, I’d be saying, I’ve just saved your life and you’re gonna gripe about it? I’m out. Talk about ungrateful! But anyway, this angel must be the real deal, because he doesn’t get upset at all. He’s sort of nice about it, in fact. He ends up telling George he’s gonna find out what it’s like to have never been born. And, boy, does he. George goes back through the town he’s lived in his whole life. But it’s changed. It’s darker, less homey and nice. Nobody knows who he is—and the kicker? His own mom doesn’t have a clue who he is. I won’t spoil it by telling you how it ends up, but let’s just say George learns his lesson. Every time I watch that movie, I’m left with the same questions on my mind: How can the changing of one simple thing from the past make the present so different? If I had never been born, how would the world be different? Or would it?

  I’m a skeptic, so I always assume, for the sake of a movie, that one person being zapped from existence really wouldn’t have much of an effect. I mean, it’s Hollywood. One of the greatest (or so they say) movies of all time. A movie with a message—something profound. Can one person really change the world? Profound messages are what movies are made for. And it’s usually pretty easy to tell what it is. I mean, for someone like me. It’s the messages in life that trip me up. I can’t hit review and watch the movie again, to see what I missed. And sometimes, I couldn’t get the message if it fell right in my lap.

  Since it’s on my mind—the movie—and there are suddenly bright lights in front of my eyes, the first thing that comes to my mind is my dad. So I call out to see if he is around. My eyes are barely open, and—darn, if that light doesn’t feel like a thousand pins in my eyes. I must have slept really hard. I’m hoping my dad will answer me quickly, because I’m not really sure where I am. Maybe we were watching that movie and I simply fell asleep in the middle of it? “I’m here, Tess.” It is my dad’s comforting voice. But, it sounds far away—not as if coming from the seat next to me on our couch.

  My throat is seriously dry, but I try to say, “Where am I?” anyway, and it comes out sounding like there is a banana stuffed in my mouth.

  Where am I?

  To be honest with you, I half expected to open my eyes and see that angel sitting next to me, my feet in a pan of hot water, sipping something steamy from a cup. I feel pretty much like I’m dead, or pretty darn close to it.

  One more word, that will bring reality into focus. “Dad?” My mind and my tongue throb with the effort it takes to speak.

  The next few minutes—which seem like hours—are pretty much a blur. My dad is holding my hand. He is standing over me and I can’t quite process the look on his face. Worried, happy—something mixed. It’s amazing how a face can express two things at once—two things that don’t really go together. And yet, most of the time, it makes perfect sense if you look at it just right.

  Yeah, I don’t really want to go into this whole thing, because I’m confused, and I will probably just confuse you, too. Turns out, I’m in the hospital. The guy in the white coat was a dead giveaway. My first thought? It was, as you might expect: Have I ever been in the hospital before? I try to remember and for some reason, being born comes to mind, and I can’t remember that, of course. Although, I have a distinct memory of someone telling me once—who was it?—that she could actually remember being born. And I was like—Yeah, right. Of course you do. That was one of those moments when you suspect someone has a really wild imagination. Anyway, even if you could remember being born, why on earth would you want to? I mean, really. That’s just spooky.

  In order to get my mind off what it would be like to be born, I starting thinking about watching that movie with my dad again. Curled up on the couch, socks on my feet—Christmas time, the usual ritual. Some Chex snack mix and an orange soda, the twinkle of tree lights in the corner of my eye—all very homey and sincere. I can’t remember how it ends, exactly, because I usually fall asleep before then. Come to think of it, I can’t remember the last time we watched it. Seems like years.

  As if my dad has read my mind, he asks me, “Tess, how do you feel? We thought we lost you.” Calm, matter-of-fact—how else does one deliver that kind of nonsense? “What?” I manage, my voice sounding garbled, my throat dry as dust.

  “You were in a serious accident,” he continues. “At Fuller Park, do you remember?”

  I shake my head, afraid to ask. I mean, do I still have all my body parts? Not a question you want to just throw out there.

  My dad clears his throat. “You were caught in a storm.”

  My voice is beginning to find itself. “Did I got struck by lightning or something?”

  “Inconclusive,” he replies. “Lightning struck nearby. You’ve been out for eight days.”

  I hear another familiar voice, from further away, a girl’s voice. My dad motions his hand, and I sense that someone is coming forward. I look up, and it’s a teenage girl with long blonde hair. She comes up to the side of my bed and stands there with a nervous half-grin, moving her eyes back and forth between me and my mom, as if she’s not sure what to do.

  My dad says, “Tess, Dani’s here.”

  Dani. My best friend? But who is this? I raise my hand in something like a wave and smiles. “Hey,” she says. “You look good.”

  “Yeah,” I say with a pitiful laugh.

  “Do you need anything?”

  My mom answers for me. “No, thank you, Dani. I’m sure seeing you is just the medicine she needed.”

  I nod, wanting to say more, but knowing that I really can’t. My tongue feels nine sizes too big for my mouth and I am in major pain from the neck down. I hear one of the doctors say something about getting me up, which I have already decided is a ridiculous idea. I can barely move my hands! Nope, I’ll just stay right where I am, thank you.

  Dani whispers something in my mom’s ear and my mom tells her it’s ok. Then Dani walks out of the room and returns in a few seconds with a tall, dark-haired guy that is so handsome, I actually feel self-conscious. I remember what I look like after sleeping one night—imagine what I look like now, after eight of them without a shower!

  “This is Zach,” Dani says. “Tess, you remember Zach, right?”

  My head is starting to hurt and I don’t want to look at anything or think more than I have to, so I just close my eyes. Maybe, I think, they will stop looking at me if I just pretend to go to sleep.

  I hear my mom say, “Maybe she just needs to rest now,” and I almost want to laugh. I’ve been out for days, Mom. I think I might be rested up.

  Dani clears her throat. “It’s ok, Mrs. Turner. We’ll come back another time.” Then, I feel her come over and touch my hand. “See you soon, ok, Tess? You get better.”

  I keep trying to place the name Zach, but nothing rings a bell. I assume he’s her boyfriend. I mean, seriously. Dani’s a knockout and this guy is hot. They look like they just walked off a movie set. I imagine them all tan in their swimsuits on a beach somewhere, white teeth everywhere, tossing a Frisbee back and forth, wind ruffling their hair. A carefree sort of movie—not the sort, incidentally, that one watches with her dad on Christmas Eve. Then I try to imagine my own life as a movie and all I can think of is how tragic, some poor girl just wakes up from a hospital bed and doesn’t know what the heck is happening—sort of like that poor sap in It’s A Wonderful Life—except everybody seems to know what’s up and I’m the only one confused. A mental case, maybe.
No one in their right mind would want to star in that one. Only losers with nothing better to do on a Saturday night would bother to watch it.

  Lucky me. Well, at least I still have sarcasm. All is not lost.

  Maybe if I go back to sleep, I will wake up and discover this has all been some crazy dream. I will wake up in my bed, back home, with my favorite quilt and my stuffed cat collection, seventeen in all—one for each year I’ve been alive.

  Zach I drive around for about fifteen minutes, my head in a fog, a lump in my throat. It would be good to cry, but I really have no right to, and anyway, it won’t do me any good. I have to keep my head about me, try to figure out where things went wrong. Memories have been erased from Tess’s chip. That much is certain. If she had awoken and recognized me, it would have been enough to convince me that she’d retained at least part of her memory. But clearly, she had not. The fact that she didn’t recognize me at all is an indication that nothing is there. My mind scrambles to make sense of the fact that she had still, perhaps, been a subject in my father’s research. The chip had been implanted, and everything had happened—between us, in another place in time. Still, her actions had likely erased all of that from the chip. Thus, she had woken up with a blank chip.

  The sun was beginning to set when I find myself pulling into the parking lot at Fuller Park. I pull into a spot, sit idling for a while, and then cut the engine. I glance down at my phone and notice a missed call from Dani, from about five minutes ago. There is no voicemail. She must still be at the hospital. I fight feelings of jealousy that Tess had recognized Dani. Of course, why wouldn’t she? They had been inseparable. Inseparable. That is what I’d hoped for—for Tess and me. And now I realize, with a pang in my gut, that we are not, in fact, inseparable. We are apart, separated by time. We are separated by something that has no mass and is really just a concept to define something ongoing within which we must ground ourselves by the notions of past, present, and future. Time, itself, is nothing. And yet, it is powerful enough to separate two people whose love cannot be placed on any timeline. My head begins to ache with the enormity…the irony of this entire situation.